Chapter 50 : Reminiscing Remnant

Taichi

The raindrops smacked dully against the window, then slid downwards, leaving behind an ugly watermarked streak. Then another raindrop would smack into the trail and slide down, and another, and another. Rain was so tedious to watch; they're just stupid molecules of water falling from the sky. Who gives a damn about the rain anyway. It was raining the day Sora died; it had been a day just like this. Dark and stormy, with the heavy clouds hanging in the sky. It had only just started falling, the rain, I mean; the weatherman had predicted it a few weeks ago, but it was only now that it finally let lose. Weathermen have such an easy job; they can make whatever prediction they want and it doesn't matter. If they're wrong, they can just say 'oops, I was wrong that time, but here's what I see for next week...'. Who really cares that much anyway? They just want to know if it's going to be rain or shine; no one cares about the wind speed or dew point or humidity level. Stupid weathermen. Smack, smack, smack against the window. My reflection was becoming obscured by the streaks of water on the glass; the distorted picture of a person. It wasn't long before my face wasn't recognizable anymore, and I started seeing other faces in the window. I hate the rain.

Yes, here I am, Taichi Kamiya, age twenty-six, single, still depressed, and still lost. I worked in a stupid little cubicle all day, buried under mountains of paperwork that I don't care to understand. I didn't know what I did in that little prison all day, typing away on the computer, retinas burning from having to stare at the stupid screen for hours upon hours. It was just some stupid office job, something that required little intelligence and thinking. It was the only sort of thing I could handle anyway. I guess it could be worse. I could still be unemployed and relying on other people. My parents, Izzy, I could still be sucking away their money like a pathetic little leech. Actually, I think I'm still relying on them. I wouldn't have a job if it weren't for the super genius Koushirou; he was doing great, naturally. His naturally superior brain could not be bogged down by tragedies and sob stories; he was unbeatable and his life was his own. He pulled some strings and convinced a disgruntled employer to take on his old broke friend.

Good ol' prodigious Izzy. I wonder where I'd be now if it weren't for him? He was a programmer or something now, like you couldn't guess. With his "1337" skillz, it had been destiny. He's been everything, actually, that has to do with the field. He's done video games, movies, designed and invented all sorts of gadgets and tools and stuff. He could have easily started his own company and bought half the the Japanese electronics industry if he had wanted to, but he didn't. Required too much energy he said. So he just goes from company to company, working as a freelance programmer type thing, getting big bucks without the crazy fame. Pretty damn smart of him, if I do say so myself, but then, I think everything he does is smart, especially if I'm the comparison. He lives in a nice apartment in Tokyo, the center of all the businesses that are at each other's throats to hire him. I think he has a little dog named Kicchou, a happy little white ball of fluff. He's got the life, eh?

I still live in Odaiba, like, a twenty minute's drive from my parent's place. I live in a cheap apartment because I was sick of someone else paying for everything, so I live here, the only place I could afford. My furniture was old and falling apart, and I had clothes hanging off their visible wire frames, clean or dirty, got me if I know. There are broken beer and liquor bottles buried under the laundry; I really ought to get around to picking those up, since I step on them all the time and cut up my feet. Eh. It isn't like I'm ever going to kick a soccer ball again anyway. Actually, there'd be a lot more bottles and illegal pills if it weren't for the consistent intervention of those certain people. Yeah, I'd be an alcoholic druggie without a doubt; sometimes I'm grateful I'm not; sometimes I wish they'd just piss off and leave me alone. Right now, I was somewhere in the middle, trying not to care and trying to just trudge through each day without reoccurring thoughts of suicide.

I owe it to people to live, I guess. I promised Kari I wouldn't be killed. Sure, when I said it, I had specifically meant by Aymichi, but wasn't it worse if I did it myself? And I wanted to see Kari when I died, so I refrain, I refrain, sometimes wondering if I just walked around drunk in the streets if I could get hit by a car. But then, it'd still be suicide wouldn't it? I would have purposely been out there with the hopes of getting runned over by some crazy driver. Besides...there was no guarantee that if I were hit, I'd die, and I didn't need more problems to deal with, more injuries to deal with, more bills for my parents to pay for. So here I am, with half-hearted determination to not kill myself, staring out the window, on a lonely Saturday night, just trying to think of something to think about. Thank you so much, Matt.

I never told them, not anyone. Why exactly, I still could not say, but now after all these years, it just doesn't make a difference anymore. I never told my parents, I never told his parents; no one, not even Izzy knew. Sometimes I felt bad for not telling the truth, sometimes I really felt as if they all deserved to know, but every time the words came to the tip of my tongue, I swallowed them again, unwilling to speak out. I guess I was still protecting him, even though no one had ever suspected. They all believed what I wanted to believe, and I guess it's really better that way. Even their true memories were fading away with the seasons, and no one cared to bring up the subject anymore. Oh, we would never forget any of them, and we would never forget what happened to them, and all the horrible ways they died, and we would never forget the killer's name, for it was etched into each of our skulls, but they would never know that Aymichi wasn't the only one.

I didn't want them to hate him. Even though I still wasn't sure how I felt, I didn't want them to hate him. I still didn't understand why he did it, didn't understand his logic and thinking, but part of me has grown to accept that I probably never would. I hated what he did, hated what he did to me and everyone else before that, but could I bring myself to really hate him? He had been my friend, my best friend; how could I hate him? It was easy sometimes. Thinking about Kari and all that she could have been, it filled me with a horrible rage. It was very easy to hate him, but it was never a permanent feeling. Sooner or later, I always went back to making excuses for him.

He hadn't been sane anymore; he had been crazy, lost his mind, his sanity stolen away with the life of his little brother. He had been in pain, grieving on the inside with an incredible need to hurt someone else. I could understand that, couldn't I? But he had to take it so far...he had almost killed Mimi; he had threatened Sora, and at long last, he finally stained his hands with someone else's blood. My sister's blood. My blood. He had betrayed me; he had betrayed us all. I had every right to hate him...But I didn't. The fact annoyed me, frustrated me, made me hate myself, but it never changed or went away. Sometimes I really wanted to hate him, tried to hate him, tried to convince myself that I hated him. It'd be so much simpler to just accept that he was a fucked up selfish bastard that only killed Kari to spite me. It would be simple then. But no. I had to keep wondering if I had really been that much of a jerk to drive him into it. I had to wonder if he really had reasonable terms, and whether it had been my fault all along.

I remembered our conversation. How he blamed me for Sora's death. I had known it was my fault; I still knew it was my fault. I still hated myself for leading her out into the open arms of death. Yamato had every right to blame me then; I shouldn't have even bothered to defend myself. It was my fault, why did I have to argue with him? Stupid, stubborn Taichi; you just couldn't take hearing it from someone else. I drove him into it. I had been stupid and un-understanding. I had driven him into killing my sister...fuck. Did it matter that I had been a driving force? It was still he that killed her in the end. I didn't make him do anything; he had done it on his own. He killed my little sister, the fucking bastard...maybe I would have less trouble hating him if he hadn't killed Aymichi in the end, sacrificing himself in the process. Maybe I could hate him easier if he hadn't ended all the insanity Aymichi had put us through. Maybe I could hate him easier if he were still alive for me to punch and smack around.

I glanced sideways at the worn old punching bag that dangled from the ceiling across the room. There was a childish-looking face scrawled on one side of the abused fabric. It was basically a crooked looking circle whose ends didn't meet, with jagged lines as angry eyes and a downward curved line for a frown. And spiked scribbles for hair. I didn't know whether the stupid drawing was supposed to represent Yamato or Aymichi. Which also annoyed me. I hated the fact that the faces were so interchangeable when I beat up that sack of sand. Sometimes I beat it up as Aymichi, for Takeru, for Joe, for Mimi. Sometimes I beat it up as Matt, for Hikari...and sometimes, I beat it up as myself, for Sora, also for Hikari, also for Takeru, and Mimi and Joe and everyone else. Izzy once said that the drawing was so crappy that it could represent anyone so it didn't really matter and that I could change what it represented on a whim because you just couldn't tell. It didn't look like anyone at all. Just a face to hate.

I looked back at the window; through the streaks of rain smeared on the window, I could see lights in the distant and the blackness of the graveyard. Yeah, that's right, I lived next to the graveyard. Easy access for when I just felt like cussing the hell out of Matt or telling Kari about how much I missed her. Izzy never gave me a speech about moving on, but I knew he wished that I would. He hated seeing me like this and I hated seeing him look at me like that. My parents never say anything. At all. Every time I see them, they just force smiles and ask me how I'm doing and nod and smile some more and remind me that if I ever need anything that they'd be there. I guess it helps to know that they're around and that they aren't ashamed (at least not openly) of me and how screwed my life is. I suppose I'll have to dig myself out eventually...maybe after I've figured out how I felt about everything. After I figure out whether or not I hated Matt; whether or not I forgave him.

My thoughts were so off-tangent. They wandered from one thing to another, distracting itself from the matter at hand constantly. I guess that's why I've managed to go nine years without figuring it out. Fuck. Nine years. Has it really been that long? Is that how long I've been like this? Is that how long I've been sitting around, leaning on people, constantly putting off pulling myself together? Is that how long my only comic relief has been making fun of Izzy's green socks? It was so sad. I wanted to be 'better', to 'move on', and all that. I really did. I wanted to be happy again and not care and just dance around being stupid without being completely wasted and high on booze. But I still felt as if that would be abandoning them all. Why did I deserve to live? Why did I deserve to be happy when all of them were dead? Why did it have to be them that were dead and not me? My opinions and thoughts changed so quickly and randomly, but they never explored new grounds. I was either angry at Matt or myself or lost in wondering why he had done what he did or wondering if it really had been myself or just fucking depressed about everything or a million other things that distracted me from those thoughts such as why people fed pigeons when they were so disgustingly fat already and why a rock was a certain color. I wish I could sort myself out, but if I couldn't do it in nine years, what were the chances of it ever happening?

I stood up, tired of looking out the window. The journey across the room was epic, I almost tripped over a beer bottle. Opening the closet door, I stepped aside to let several random objects - a tennis racket I didn't know I owned, a soccer ball with black patches ripped off, and a baseball bat I sometimes used to abuse the punching bag with - fall from the tiny compartment. Without much intelligent thought, I fished out the huge black umbrella with the broken spoke and headed for the door. It wasn't raining too hard. Why was I even bothering to go out in the middle of the night to walk through a wet graveyard? Hell should I know. I just felt like it. And as it wasn't often I felt like doing anything, I guess I thought I might as well go through with it because I had nothing better to do. Not bothering to lock the door behind me (I doubted anyone would want to steal dirty clothes and broken beer bottles), I walked down the silent length of apartment corridor and out the main doors. The stupid umbrella caught for a moment before opening, so I got a bit wet, but oh well. Somehow managing to keep the rest of me mostly dry, I headed off on the familiar path to the graveyard.

The raindrops thudded on my umbrella, a constant reminder of random things, including that whole weatherman rant. Maybe I should be a weatherman, it was such a stupid job. But I'd feel stupid waving my arms around in front of a blue screen where a map was supposed to be, and I never liked cameras anyway. I sighed; at least I hadn't lost my ability to make stupid jokes. Sure, they weren't often said aloud anymore, but I was still funny right? I liked being funny; I liked making people laugh, but I didn't do that anymore. I just made people feel sorry for me. Could I be funny again if I tired? I bet I could. If I could stop feeling so fucking lost and hopeless and stupid and depressed. I pushed open the rusty gates to the graveyard, the rough metal quite familiar. The path was sloshy and wet and my boots sank down in the muddy dirt, but I've visited in the rain before and didn't pay much attention to it. Kari would have probably told me to watch it and laugh when I fell face first in the mud. But she wasn't here, and I didn't fall, so there wasn't much to laugh at about the situation.

Kari would be what...twenty-three now? If she were alive she'd have just graduated college no doubt, she's always been smarter than me. What would she be doing now? What nice paying job would she have? I came to her grave, the marble marker stark and white in the rainy night. I sat down on the gravestone opposite of her's, rude probably, but I didn't really think about it. "Hey little sister," I said to the grave, "About time it rained, huh?" I had gotten accustomed to having one-sided conversation with my sister and all my dead friends. It was really sad I guess, but it made up for not talking much to everyone else. Sometimes it helped; sometimes it made me miss them more. "How're you doing, hmm? The boss got pissed at me today. Stood there at the door of my cubicle screaming for like ten whole minutes. Not sure what I did though, I wasn't really listening to him the whole time. I guess I should have though, Izzy went through a lot to get me that job. I shouldn't be so careless." I paused, feeling a little stupid, feeling a little better at talking, even if I don't get an answer. I stared at the inscription of her name, listening to the thudding of the rain, pretending that it was her voice.

After a while of pretending, I sighed and started talking again as if my jabbering could make up for her silence, "What should I do, Kari? You know I miss you like hell, and everyone else. Would you be able to forgive...say TK if he killed me for some obscured reason?" The analogy was random, but I suppose it did fit, "I know he'd never do such a thing, but you didn't expect Matt to be the one to kill you did you? What am I supposed to do, hmm? Am I supposed to forgive him? Am I supposed to hate him? Or am I just supposed to be confused forever?" I had asked that before, and she hadn't answered, so here I am asking again. Yamato had regretted what he'd done though...his tears and his face, how could I hate him after seeing him suffer like that? All the pain he'd gone through to destroy the killer once and for all? How could I hate him after seeing him there, clutching his bloody wounds and crying and asking for forgiveness? How could I deny him that? I was starting to feel depressed again, staring bitterly at the headstone of my sister's grave. "Do you forgive him, Kari? For killing you and taking you away from me? Do you forgive him?"

Pitter patter, pitter patter, listen to the rain; pitter patter, pitter patter listen to the rain. I sat there for a while longer, reading and rereading the inscriptions and waiting for an answer. But it never came, just like it never would, and giving another sigh of despair, I got up and trudged along to the other side of the graveyard. Along the way, I stopped briefly at everyone else's grave. I bided Mimi good evening and told her that the fashion of the world would probably be better if she were around and relayed to her the description of this odd looking fellow I saw the other day on the way to the office. I told Joe that his brother had been in the newspaper the other day for some reason I had forgotten. I told Sora that our old soccer team had made it into playoffs this season, and asked her if she thought they would do well in the wet weather. Then I came to the brothers' graves; they sat side by side, lonely looking in the dripping rain, the water running off the sides of the marble and soaking into the ground. I had gotten Takeru's gravestone replaced with a nicer one because it had been bothering me. I remembered how angry Yama had been at his funeral. So now their markers were identical save the engravings of their name, the years they lived, and a short little message that somehow managed to sneak in the word of their crest.

I just stood there for a while, looking at the them, listening some more to the tedium of rain, wondering what to say. Countless times I had been here before, sometimes looking for comfort, sometimes looking for a scapegoat, sometimes just to be around because I had no where else to be. All of my friends were here, why should I be anywhere else? "Hi Matt." I said slowly, tiredly, suddenly aware that it was like eleven o'clock at night and I was standing out here in the rain - which was starting to come down harder. I pondered some more about what to say, slowly remembering what I had said the last time I was here. It had been last week, and I had blown up on him, going off on a crazy rant that included blaming him for everything from Kari's death to my lousy paycheck to the fact that Hiroshima had beaten Tokyo in the last soccer game. If he were still alive, I would have probably gotten a bruise or two and a black eye. It was a stupid thing I did, but I had done it a thousand times before, silly Taichi just needed someone to blame.

I should forgive him; I should hate him. It's like that little flower petal thing. I forgive him. I forgive him not. I forgive him. I forgive him not. I looked around absently, wondering if there were any daisies around for me to rip the petals off of. Nope, no flowers. I looked over to TK, "What do you think I should do, Teeks? Should I forgive your brother?" And again I wondered what their replies would be. TK had been close to Kari after all. Did he forgive his brother for killing her? Damn them for all being dead and leaving me alone to wonder. If I told Izzy that Yama had been the one who killed Hikari and not Aymichi, what would he think? What would he feel? Would he hate Matt like I sometimes did, or would he forgive him like I sometimes did? Izzy wasn't a hateful person, though. Probably the latter. He would believe that Matt had made a mistake and that he truly regretted it and thus could be forgiven. But what about everyone else? What about my parents? What would they think of Matt if they knew that he had been who took their daughter's life? And what would Yama's parents think? Their son had murdered someone, after all.

But they didn't know. None of them knew. And I wouldn't tell him. I couldn't tell them. "Why am I still protecting you?" I ask exasperatedly at his gravestone. Did it really even matter if his parents hated him, if my parents hated him, if Izzy hated him, if I hated him? He was gone. He would never know. "If Aymichi had killed Kari first, and I had killed Takeru to make you understand, would you hate me, Yammy?" No reply. To hate or not to hate, that is the question. Well on one hand, he had killed my sister, destroyed my family, and in ways helped Aymichi with his deranged task. On the other hand, he had killed Aymichi, in the process forfeiting his own life, been my friend for a million years, always been there for me to confide in and punch in the face, and all that friendship crap. On another hand, it hadn't really been his fault, I had driven him into it, and it was partially my fault that Kari was dead, but he...fuck. How many hands did I have anyway? Why couldn't things just be in black and white? He regretted it. It wasn't as if he killed her and laughed in my face. He just wanted me to understand him, to know how he felt....was that so wrong in itself? It was my fault for being an un-understanding bastard. What more did I want from him? He had used up his last breaths in apology, he killed Aymichi, assuring my life, he had done a lot. More good than harm? I don't know. But he did do a lot.

I remembered for the millionth time the stupid tape that had by chance taken the images of his final moments. I couldn't hate him. I'd realized it before, but maybe this time was different. Maybe if I just allowed myself to accept something and let it be done and final and written in blood, then I could finally dare I say...move on? Maybe. I sighed, "I can't hate you. I can hate what you did all I want, but I can't hate you. I guess that's sort of obvious. If I really hated you I wouldn't come here all the time. I wouldn't talk to you; I wouldn't tell you things; I wouldn't be here wondering. If I really hated you I would have stopped asking a long time ago. So what else is there left to do but forgive you?" I paused, I had never told him I had forgiven him before. I had said I didn't hate him, and that his memory did not make me want to break things (all the time), but I had never told him that I forgave him. Maybe saying so would make it final, and I could stop wondering. It felt so dramatic and important all of a sudden. He had been waiting for this for nine years after all. He deserved to be forgiven. It had been a mistake was all...we were all young and stupid...we all made mistakes. It was his fault; it was my fault. Everyone was at fault. I could leave it at that, couldn't I?

"I..." The world was waiting. "I forgive you, Matt."

There. I said it. My voice was soft, but I said it. Aloud. To the marble gravestone. I said it. And I meant it. I forgave him, officially. Was everything better now? Well...I don't know. I sort of felt better in a weird sort of way...and I realized that I had solved a problem that had been bothering me forever. Yeah. Did I hate him? No. I forgave him. No more nights of wondering how I felt anymore. I had resolved something. Good for you, Taichi, now what? I thought for a bit. I didn't know, but I suppose what would come would just come. If I woke up hating him in the morning, that was it's own thing; I would only end up forgiving him again. I grinned suddenly, the tugs at the edges of my lips feeling really, really foreign, but somehow right. I liked smiling. I liked being happy. I should do it more often. I had always hated it when other people were depressed, it had bothered me. When Yama was all stony and silent in the hospital, when Sora was all stony and silent in her room. It had always bothered me. And then I had gone and turned around and been depressed for nine years. Well, I could blame people easily, but it that's what I had done for nine years already. Maybe it was their fault that certain people were dead, but it was my fault I was letting myself get runned over again and again by the memories.

So then. I forgive you, Yammy, and I'm not going to mope anymore. Aymichi tried to kill us all, but here I am alive. I might as well stop acting dead and spit in his face, huh? If you were here you'd either laugh at me or call me an idiot, either of which is fine, because I am an idiot, and I like it when people laugh, even if it's at me. I could laugh at me. I felt uplifted and free all of a sudden, like a heavy burden had been lifted from my back, and in a way it has. I hadn't felt this good in a long, long time. "Well then, good night, hmm?" I pranced off away from the graves, almost slipping and breaking my neck, but somehow managed to survive. The umbrella was twirling around now, and raindrops were being flung off in every direction, though it hardly mattered as the rain was still coming down. I got even more wet, the raindrops splashing down into my unruly hair and trickling down my face. If the neighbors were looking out their windows, they'd be wondering why the hell a man in his mid-twenties was out dancing in the rain with my broken umbrella at nearly midnight, but I didn't really care at the moment. If they were around, my friends, my sister, if they were around, they'd be laughing at me, perhaps being stupid with me, but they weren't so I'll just have to laugh and dance and make up for their not being here all by my lonesome. I have to laugh and smile enough for the lot of them.
 

FIN.

Author's Notes

© Kiriska